Moving Forward

July 05, 2016By Jim Thompson

Over the past few months, the Netgate® engineering team and our community contributors have delivered the software foundation for a new era of pfSense® technology.

In April we released version 2.3 of pfSense software which features a new, modern webGUI utilizing Bootstrap, as well as converting the underlying system to FreeBSD® pkg. The pkg conversion enables us to update pieces of the system individually going forward, rather than the monolithic updates of the past. The webGUI rewrite brings a new responsive look and feel to the pfSense project, which minimizes resizing or scrolling across a wide range of devices from desktop to mobile phones.

Since releasing pfSense 2.3 we have demonstrated both a dual Ethernet ARM device and the new dual Ethernet Minnowboard Turbot, running an experimental version of pfSense software version 2.4. We have also shown technology demonstrations of kernel bypass networking via netmap-fwd, which can yield ten-fold improvements in packet processing. Taken together, these results demonstrate the start of a new era for Netgate and pfSense.

As we enter this new era, Chris Buechler has informed us that he will be leaving the project to pursue a career outside of pfSense and Netgate. On behalf of the company and community, I thank Chris for his passion and dedication to the pfSense project. He worked hard to help build pfSense into an Open Source project that is recognized and respected worldwide as the best-in-class Open Source firewall and router based on FreeBSD. We will not only miss the technical expertise Chris brought, but also his in-depth knowledge of the pfSense community and customer base. Please join me me in wishing Chris well in his future endeavors. We will announce a new community manager in the next several weeks. With change, comes great opportunity.

As most of you know, pfSense serves a worldwide community of more than 350,000 users who are passionate about protecting their networks, large and small, using the most flexible, extendable and reliable Open Source firewall and router available.

What we have accomplished over the past few years bringing pfSense technology up to date with changes in FreeBSD, expanding availability into the cloud with Amazon® AWS, Microsoft® Azure and VMware® Certified images, while also making changes in how we think about security and networking is nothing short of amazing. We know that we have more amazing in us and that Netgate and pfSense have a bright future ahead. We are excited about our people, we are energized by our ability to change and grow, and we look forward to the success which lies ahead. We look forward to your continued contributions, and continuing to participate with you in creating the best that pfSense can be.

Thank you for your continued effort working collaboratively in our passionate community of contributors, testers, and users. Together we will continue to advance the state of the art of the best Open Source network security software on the planet.

Aloha Oe, Chris.

Jim and the Netgate Team

About Netgate

As host of the pfSense® open source firewall project, Netgate believes in enhancing network connectivity that maintains both security and privacy. We also believe everyone should be able to afford it.